05 August 2008

Entrenching insanity

With 88 percent of the EU's fish stocks over-fished, diminishing fuel supplies, and its Kyoto emission targets looking unlikely ever to be met, what is the response of the EU Commission? Raise fuel subsidies to the fishing industry of course. You can read about it here. Also today's news gives more details of UK government bailout of Northern Rock, which currently owes UK taxpayers will stand to lose up to £17.5 billion.

There's a perverse logic to these perverse subsidies. Once you've started dishing out subsidies, it's very difficult to stop. The effect of the subsidies is to swell the power of the recipients to oppose any reduction in their subsidies. It's a corrupt, insane way of running things from the point of view of society as a whole. But who has that point of view any more?

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Social Policy Bonds

See the Social Policy Bonds website for overviews and links to articles, papers, news and more about Social Policy Bonds. Click on the image below to download a 2400-word article, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, London.

Social Policy Bonds in 2400 words

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Social Policy Bonds in the media

9 October 2015: An article by Greg Bearup on the genesis of the Social Policy Bond idea, and application of a version of it in Australia appears in the Weekend Australian Magazine. (The article can also be downloaded as a pdf from here.)

October 2013: Professor Robert Shiller of Yale University, is named as one of the three winners of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics. His Nobel Prize lecture (pdf) delivered on 8 December, mentions Social Policy Bonds. Professor Shiller has for many years encouraged my work on Social Policy Bonds, beginning in late 1996 when he sent me this letter.

3 May 2012: An audio talk by Nobel Prize winner Professor Robert Shiller at the London School of Economics, in which Social Policy Bonds are briefly mentioned, is available here.